Rare White Spearing Mantis

Another week and another Lembeh surprise. I found a White Spearing Mantis!

We get quite a lot of mantis shrimp in Lembeh, both the smashing mantis and the spearing mantis. Smashing Mantis have round eyes and (as the name suggests) smash their prey. Spearing Mantis have oval jellybean-like eyes and they spear their prey.

The most common mantis we get are the Peacock Mantis, the Tiger Mantis and the Golden Mantis. There are also many other types.

What I didn’t know is that we also get a White Mantis. This is an un-described mantis that is only known from Indonesia and was completely unknown to me until I found this one!

It was rather conspicuous, in it’s borrow, bright white in a sea of black sand. And it wasn’t a small mantis, probably about 15cm (6”) long. It seemed fairly unconcerned by me and allow me to get some nice close-ups of a very unusual critter. I particularly like the close-ups of it’s eye, where you can actually see the multiple lenses that cover the eye.